Analog Bus

The balance stage helps you ensure that your tracks are hitting the mix bus properly with three VU meters and paired compressors spread across the stereo image (mid low freq, mid high freq, side). Easily identify excessively loud or quiet kick, snare, vocal, or lead levels and choose whether to address them at the track level and/or apply some dynamic control in stage 1 to ensure the rest of the bus stages can perform optimally.

• Three meters, one scale. The gain-reduction meters share one scale, so the balance between low mids, high mids, and the stereo edges is something you read rather than guess at.

A VCA style bus compressor whose grip stays gentle even at relatively high-compression settings. Inspired by combining aspects of our favorite iconic studio bus compressors which have produced hit music for generations, the detector listens to the compressor's own output, which lets you lean into it to get more of the same gentle control, not a flattened mix.

• Perfect stereo image. Combine dynamics settings with L/R independence amount and mix dry/wet percentage to finely tune the overall width of the early mix stages.

Simulate four different tape formulations, IPS settings, and then drive the input to liven up your mixes with analog color that never disappoints.

• Drive it for density, not crunch. Cymbals, sibilance, and the top of the snare get rounded and thickened before the body does, so the mix gets denser instead of crunchier.

Inspired by the most-iconic analog EQs in existence (with some or our own tweaks), the Program EQ is a non-linear tube EQ that is perfect for bus-level EQ adjustments. Adjust the low boost and low cut in tandem to create low end power and clarity. Add boost at 12 KHz or 16 KHz in combination with a tiny cut at 20 KHz to add gentle, pleasing air to your mix.

• Big on a club system, clear on a phone. The low boost/cut controls move weight and mud in opposite directions at the same time, the staple move behind a powerful bottom end.

The Mastering Compressor employs a two-stage, independent detector, optical + discrete compression strategy that allows for a complex response to bus dynamics. Inspired by famous combined units which drew inspiration from prior legendary optical and VCA bus compression units, our mastering compressor provides all of the control needed to shape the attitude of your mix prior to the final limiting stage.

• Controls tailor the output for final limiting. A mono maker optionally folds everything below a chosen frequency to the center, a width control sits beside a correlation bar, and three channel modes let the pair work the center and sides separately.

The stage ships inert: you turn the thresholds up to get compression rather than finding it already compressing, so opening it costs nothing until you ask.

Achieving industry-level final loudness is non-negotiable. The Brickwall limiter lets you get the levels you want with the control to make the limiting as transparent or noticeable as you'd like depending on the genre you're targeting. The slow "rider" stage helps with overall leveling while the "wall" stage catches and controls faster transients.

• True peak oversampling up to 32x. Tame inter-sample peaks prior to final mix-down to avoid unwanted surprises at release time.
• A peak detector that errs the safe way. It runs at eight times the resolution of the metering standard's reference filter, because an estimate that reads low removes too little gain and something slips over.

The ceiling caps the sample output, so a true-peak reading can sit slightly above it by design.

The loudness meters sit at the end of the chain and are always on. Momentary, short-term, and integrated LUFS read above a true peak meter in dBTP, so you can hit the loudness your release needs and see how close the output comes to the ceiling before you bounce.